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HAGL Academy to promote Arsenal in Vietnam

Construction of the new Vietnam football academy of V-League club Hoang Anh Gia Lai, assosiated with English Premier League club Arsenal, will begin 5 March. The HAGL-Arsenal Football Academy – two stadiums and buildings for trainees’ accommodations – will be located in the Ham Rong District, Gia Lai Province in the central highlands. Arsenal will send officials to attend the ground-breaking ceremony to sign a pact of strategic cooperation to train youth, trade souvenirs and transfer players, Thanh Nien newspaper reported.

Doan Nguyen Duc, HAGL chairman, said his players will wear shirts similar to Arsenal’s to promote the name in Vietnam and Arsene Wenger, Arsenal coach, reportedly confirmed he would send specialists and supply training methods for HAGL to build the institute. Under the plan, youths will spend seven years training at the institute.

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As China signs up some of the world’s leading football
players, Simon Chadwick explains how this incredibly ambitious
football strategy is sending shock waves around the world game:

EACH YEAR, EUROPEAN
football clubs are able to buy and sell players during two specific periods of
time, known as transfer windows. One of the windows is in summer; the other is
in winter and in Europe this year’s has just closed. Normally these windows are characterised
by the lavish, high-profile spending of football’s elite – the likes of Real
Madrid, Manchester United and Bayern Munich. Indeed, a
week ago the English Premier League was being heralded as
being the £1
billion player transfer market (the value of transactions that took
place during 2015). But in one astounding move, everything
that many people thought they knew about football and the transfer of its
players was turned on its head. Last Tuesday, Columbian
international Jackson
Martineztransferred
from Atletico Madrid of Spain to China's G…